Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Even in this modern digital age, the numbers authors get on actual sales, readers, etc. of their books comes in small amounts and exceedingly late. This is why we torture ourselves with sites like TitleZ.

So it's always great to get some insight into how things are really going out there (i.e., beyond the spare bedrooms where many of us sit inside all day and work, seeing no other living souls...). Ohio's Cuyahoga Falls Library just posted its lists of Most Popular Books of 2009. ("Most Popular" = "Most Checked-Out".) The books are grouped by category.

For instance, James Patterson's Run for Your Life was the most widely circulated Fiction book. Season's Eatings : a very Merry Garfield Christmas was top dog (cat) in the Graphic Novel category. (Interestingly, nine of the top ten Graphic Novels were comic strip collections. What does this bode for libraries in the future when the prognosis for newspaper comics pages looks exceedingly bleak?) Stephenie Meyers' The Host and young master Paolini's Brisingr were 1 and 2 in the Science Fiction category. And John Grisham's The Associate was the top Large Print title (in case you were wondering).